Like Ships that Pass
by Polydicta
Summary: Harry goes to hide away after his name is drawn from the Goblet of Fire. Doom, despair, alcoholism and character death … and Sibyl Trelawney. May need brain bleach.


**Like Ships that Pass ... or, The Lives and Loves of Harry Potter**

by Polydicta

**Summary:**

Harry goes to hide away after his name is drawn from the Goblet of Fire Doom, despair, alcoholism and character death … and Sibyl Trelawney. May need brain bleach.

**Disclaimer: **

All fiction is derivative and fan fiction doubly so. I make no claim to own any part of any of the following, all I have done is an attempt to put together the elements in a novel fashion, using words and ideas like Lego ™ bricks.

There is no money involved – all I do is to share what I do for my own amusement.

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**Like Ships that Pass ... or, The Lives and Loves of Harry Potter**

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Harry was shocked and stunned by his name appearing from the Goblet of Fire. He was deeply offended at being told that he would have to compete, even though he hadn't even entered his name. He was sick of Ron and everyone else who decided that he must be lying.

He had one friend who believed him. One, out of a school of three hundred students. Dumbledore believed, but his was one voice, the same as Hermione's. The name-calling and the badges had just become too much.

_"Hermione, look, I'm going to go and find somewhere quiet to hide out for a few hours. I just need to think for a bit. I promise that I won't get caught and I won't do anything stupid."_

_"Okay, Harry. Take care. Try to get some sleep. Ni-night."_

And so here he was, sat in a disused classroom on the third floor. He'd had enough brooding, now he just didn't feel like heading back to his dorm, so he explored.

There was a shape on one of the desks covered by a cloth. Harry lifted it.

There, before him stood an ornate, gilded frame. It put him in mind of a small version of the Mirror of Erised. The carving read: _ebtey yamta hwtub sita hwton wohsi_

It looked like a mirror, the silvering blackened and gone, but in the dark, shadowy depths, Harry could see shapes. He looked closer …

.

.

He felt a moment of vertigo, and felt himself falling into the mirror, but the expected thump never arrived. He opened his eyes on a scene …

The Gryffindor common-room was empty but for himself and, Ginny Weasley. Well, the two figures sat on the sofa looked like him and Ginny, but … Yes, they were, but older.

They were smiling at each other. Tentatively, they moved in toward each other, and their lips met.

Fascinated, Harry watched. The scene changed, and flickered through a series of dates and trysts. A battle where he emerged victorious. Then a wedding … Harry and Ginny getting wed. Then .. after several children, Harry could see his older self browbeaten, stuck in a dead-end job. The arguments and rows, the vicious fights, and ultimately separation and loneliness, the older Harry a broken man, drinking himself into a stupor and finally dying an ignominious death at the hands of a muggle mugger.

Harry shuddered, this was in his opinion the stuff of Trelawney's classes.

He looked away and when he looked back …

He was in the Gryffindor common room again. He was snogging Loony Lovegood, a girl he'd seen occasionally around the school.

Well, he seemed to be enjoying himself. Again, he saw the flickering scenes of his relationship with the girl. Harry was studying hard, but was perpetually distracted by her strange and fanciful ideas. Somehow, he saw himself in a graveyard with a creature … Harry heard himself call the thing Voldemort. They duelled. Their wands locked somehow, and Voldemort broke off the connection. As Harry was thrown back, he was hit by Voldemort's killing curse.

Harry tried to get away from the mirror …

He was in some kind of training room with other students leaving, wishing him a Merry Christmas. There was a girl, an oriental-looking girl.

They were stood under a sprig of mistletoe.

"Mistletoe," she said.

"Probably full of nargles," Harry replied.

"What are nargles?"

"No idea …"

Their lips met, but the girl was crying.

The relationship progressed, the war passed with Harry victorious.

There was a restaurant … it was a date. Dinner somewhere fancy. They were both older. Harry realised that they had nothing to talk about.

"Harry, I'm sorry … I don't know what went wrong, but …"

"I know. You want us to go our separate ways, don't you? Well, fine. You can have the flat, I'll move out."

"Harry …"

"No, it's alright, we thought we had something special, but …"

Tears streaked both their faces as they said their final goodbye. They kissed, a mirror of that first kiss under the mistletoe and went their separate ways.

.

Harry felt his eyes prickling with tears. He blinked them away, and once more saw the scene change …

Harry was walking outside with some girl. He tried to remember the name. Harry thought she might be in Ginny's year. Milda, or something.

"Harry, there's something …"

Harry could see the love shining in his older self's eyes, but there was something predatory in the girl's.

Harry moved in to kiss her and the observer saw the look of absolute triumph in the girl's eyes. There was a flicker of red magic, and a smell of … vanilla and parchment.. Harry knew the smell, but there was no way it was associated with the girl in front of him.

"Romilda …" he sighed.

Time flickered and Harry was once more facing Voldemort, this time in front of Hogwarts. The slightly stunned expression on his older self's face was like someone in a trance – under the Imperious curse or … under the influence of potions.

"Avada kavadra!"

Harry collapsed. Dead. Defeated and leaving no hope for the world.

.

He felt his empty stomach rebelling, but then the world shifted once more.

He was in the Divination Loft, alone with Sibyl Trelawney. The woman was speaking to him … about combining their magic and casting their minds adrift together.

The other Harry seemed to be flattered by the old fraud's advances. He moved in and …

Harry screamed out, "_**That is SO not right!**_"

The vision shifted once more, and he saw himself with that pretty girl from Beauxbatons. They were snogging. Harry saw his other self's eyes were glazed, and he realised that the girl was, as Hermione had correctly surmised, part veela.

He saw his other self in thrall to her power, putty in her hand, a toy to be played with and perhaps to be cast aside. The scene flickered forward and Harry saw his assumptions vindicated. He also saw himself once more in the cemetery, but this time, he was blasted into oblivion without even raising his wand.

.

Next was the Hufflepuff, Susan Bones. This relationship went well, but Harry was lazy. This he well admitted to himself, and when Harry graduated from Hogwarts, it was as an unqualified nothing. All he had was a red-headed girlfriend who dumped him as a waste of space.

Harry saw himself die at the hands of Voldemort, blasted from behind as he wandered through muggle London.

.

The scene changed and changed again. He was becoming depressed by the endless parade of dysfunctional relationships, the thousand variations on ways to die, divorce, degenerate and disappear.

The marriage to one of the Slytherin girls was the worst. He defected to the dark side, and was eventually killed in a fire-fight with the Aurors.

Harry was becoming desperate, and almost vowed that if he got out of this mirror alive, he'd swear off relationships with women forever.

He saw the Patil sisters: Parvati with himself and Padma with Ron on a disastrous date ending with the girls leaving in a huff. He also saw himself with Padma, but that was no better in the long run.

There were more broken relationships with girls he barely knew, and even with a few boys. Many of them, thankfully, never even began before being over.

He even saw the results of his living without love entering his life. Hard, brutal and, predictably, short. He had watched himself take his own life using the killing curse, and not for the first time.

.

Then came one vision that caught his eye.

He was in class with Professor McGonagall.

"It is traditional that there is a Yule Ball which, as the name suggests, is primarily a dance …"

Most of the boys groaned. Harry leaned over to his bushy-haired friend.

"Hermione, would you be my date for the Yule Ball? And will you come on a date to Hogsmead with me on Saturday?"

Her face lit up with joy, and she hugged him.

"Miss Granger …?"

Then McGonagall's expression softened as she realised what had happened.

.

Harry had asked the dour Scots professor for additional help in learning to dance, and she had readily agreed.

.

The Yule Ball, Hermione came down the stairs in a periwinkle-blue gown.

"Hermione, You look lovely. Now, an early present. Merry Christmas, Hermione …"

He handed her a small box which she opened.

"Harry! They're beautiful."

He put on the necklace for her and she put in the pendant earrings. Mid-blue sapphires now adorned her neck and ears, complementing her gown perfectly.

"Harry, how did you know …?"

"Ah, I saw this all once in a dream."

There was a hug and a chaste kiss, and then the Yule Ball.

.

The relationship progressed steadily. He saw their first real kiss. Hermione pushed Harry to learn more and more, initially for the tournament and later for the war's sake, leaving Ron behind academically.

Harry could see his other self coming to enjoy his studies, a fact aided by his girlfriend's patient teaching. Himself, excelling in his studies, actually doing what was useful and not what was easy.

He saw himself victorious over Voldemort, standing with his lady beside him.

He saw their wedding, their tentative first night as man and wife, their children, their careers, their retirement and, at last, their final passing together, still in love.

He was crying at the beauty of their story together.

.

Harry felt himself falling once more, and found himself laying on the floor of a disused classroom on the third floor, the first rays of the dawn shining through the dust-encrusted windows.

Donning his cloak, Harry snuck up to the Gryffindor common room.

He bumped into Peeves. Expecting to be screeched at, and the alarm raised, Peeves simply said, "Nothing I can do that's worse than you already got."

He blew a raspberry at Harry and left.

Through the common room, up the stairs and into his dormitory, Harry went. He undressed, showered and got dressed, ready for the new day, feeling strangely refreshed. Alive. He was waiting for Hermione when she came down, and they left for breakfast early.

.

"It is traditional that there is a Yule Ball which, as the name suggests, is primarily a dance …"

Most of the boys groaned. Harry leaned over to his bushy-haired friend.

"Hermione, would you be my date for the Yule Ball? And will you come on a date to Hogsmead with me on Saturday?"

Her face lit up with joy, and she hugged him.

"Miss Granger …?"

Then McGonagall's expression softened as she realised what had happened.

Harry determined that he would visit the jeweller's shop on Saturday when he took Hermione to Hogsmead, but first he needed to ask McGonagall for some help …


End file.
